News in pictures 10 August 2011

A beloved household name in Boston, Jerry Remy is a former Red Sox second baseman and the long-standing commentator for all of his former team’s games. Last year, he partnered with the Cronin Group Restaurants to create Jerry Remy’s Sports Bar & Grill just outside of historic Fenway Park. The venture was successful and the group recently opened a second location at Liberty Wharf on Boston Harbor. An adjacent public dock with 50 slips allows patrons to arrive by land or by sea.

Like its predecessor, the new location promises a game-day experience that rivals Fenway itself, with a 32-foot monster HD video wall (New England’s largest) and 46 additional large HD plasma screens distributed strategically throughout the open-air establishment. The owners again called on Rob Soluri of Custom Cable to design and install the all-important AV system and Soluri called on the Symetrix Zone Mix 760 to once again deliver easy-to-use, reliable, and cost-effective digital signal processing.

“The visuals are what grab your attention when you enter Jerry Remy’s,” explained Soluri, “but I knew that the audio quality had to be commensurate with the brilliance of all those screens. It’s the perfect job for the Symetrix Zone Mix 760, which, apart from sounding fantastic, is competitively priced, quick to set up, and steadfastly reliable. Paired with Symetrix ARC wall panels, I can tailor those aspects of the system that the user has control over. Thus, from the user’s viewpoint, the audio system is intuitive, dependable, and less expensive than they anticipated.”

CAYIN’s digital signage players are being used in 15 LCD screens in BarcelonaTech, the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC). With more than 2,000 foreign students from all over the world enrolling each year, UPC has positioned itself as a leading centre for knowledge exchange in areas from science and technology to architecture.

This project implemented by PGN and imaginArt, CAYIN’s partners in Spain. The new digital screen network has created a paperless environment and provides updated information to students and visitors while simplifying daily operation. To increase the reach of college announcements, 42” LCD screens were installed in the main hallway of each floor, ensuring maximum visibility for students and visitors.

UPC has also installed a 15” LCD screen outside each classroom. Students and visitors can learn about the teacher and subject of the class taking place in each room and identify the correct room quickly. The schedule is edited in advance on a CAYIN CMS server.

Hamburg’s oldest parish church, Hauptkirche St Petri, founded in the 11th century, has been equipped with a state-of-the-art sound system designed and installed by Cobra sound light. The Hamburg-based live event and system design company has fitted the church with Renkus-Heinz IC Live digitally beam steerable loudspeakers to achieve audiophile sound quality for church services, lectures, church music, concerts, readings and a wide variety of other cultural events.

“St Petri church specifically wanted the loudspeakers not to intrude on the architecture,” explained Cobra’s engineer and project manager Hendrik Thode. “This ruled out flying a system in the sanctuary, and demanded a digitally steerable system because of the dimensions of the large central nave – approximately 25 metres long and 24 metres high inside the central and the side aisles – and the long reverberation time of around 8 seconds. The system needed to deliver direct sound for perfect speech intelligibility to the rearmost pew.”

IC Live loudspeakers proved to be the best solution, with four Renkus-Heinz ICL-F speakers for the central nave, with a further ICL-F to the right and left in to the sanctuary chamber. “The biggest challenge,” said Thode, “were the numerous pillars, about 1.20 metres in diameter, and the fact that the pulpit extended well into the central nave of the church and acoustically shadowed a large part of the central nave, which we resolved by installing a further ICL-F either side for delays.”

Two Robert Juliat Aramis followspots with motorized dousers are lighting up The Hylton Performing Arts Center on the Prince William Campus of George Mason University in Manassas, Virginia, USA.

The 85,000-square-foot Center, which opened last year, serves the Northern Virginia community. Theatre consultant and lighting designer Robert Davis specified Aramis followspots for the 1,121-seat Merchant Hall, which is designed for symphony orchestra performances, dance, opera and theatre and boasts a 45-foot by 100-foot stage and a motorized pit set for large orchestras.

“A followspot has to do everything perfectly: It doesn’t have to clear just one hurdle, but dozens,” says Davis. “The instrument has to have a really good followspot beam, and you need to have good control over it. It has to accelerate and decelerate smoothly and stand rock solid – any jiggle at 100 feet will be greatly exaggerated. Remember that the star talent will be standing right in this light!

“The beam has to be flexible enough to accommodate different kinds of performances. Taking all these things into consideration, I recommended the Robert Juliat Aramis followspot because my clients can depend on it to perform in critical situations.”

Aramis is a powerful 2500W HMI followspot with a high light output, making it ideal for long-throw venues and theatrical applications. It is equipped with high-quality optics and covered in a robust housing for prolonged use in fixed and on-the-road situations.